The last couple of weeks may be looked back on as a watershed in the development of electric vehicles-a moment when major automakers worldwide put more skin in the game and, just as importantly, consumers signaled they were ready for the electric revolution. Let’s take a look at consumers first. They have turned the all-electric Nissan Leaf into the iPad of the automotive world. The first Leaf has yet to roll off the production lines and already the car is sold out in both the United States and Japan, its first markets. Granted, the 13,000 orders in the U.S. and 6,000 orders in Japan are miniscule for an industry that measures unit sales in the seven figures. But it’s certainly an indication that if you build electric cars, consumers will come. And Carlos Ghosn, the head of Nissan, plans to make a huge bet on electric cars in the future. Ghosn says his company and its European partner, Renault, will have the capacity to make 500,000 electric cars by 2014. That means a $1.7 billion investment in the company’s lithium ion battery plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, and a total investment of $5 billion from 2007 to 2012 […]